While the teachings of the present invention are applicable to many types of surgical drapes, for purposes of an exemplary showing, they will be described in their application to a reusable cardiovascular surgical drape.
It is the usual practice to provide a cardiovascular surgical drape with a rather large fenestration exposing the patient's chest. A number of surgical procedures involving the heart require the attachment to the patient's chest of tubes, wires or the like which are connected to various medical devices, all as is well known in the art. Since these tubes, wires or the like are applied to the patient's chest area during the operation and through the surgical drape fenestration, a problem arises when the procedure is ended and it is desired to remove the surgical drape. When a disposable surgical drape is used, a usual procedure is to simply cut a slit in the surgical drape from the fenestration to one of the drape edges, enabling the drape to be pulled about the tubes and wires and removed from the patient.
From a similar standpoint, the use of a reusable cardiovascular surgical drape has disadvantages. Sometimes, the piece of equipment to which a wire or tube is attached is of such size that it will pass through the fenestration. Other equipment, however, will not. In such an instance, removal of the reusable surgical drape requires momentary disconnection of certain tubes and wires from their respective pieces of equipment, until the drape can be removed, after which the tubes and wires reconnected. Such disconnection and reconnection of tubes and wires may subject the operating room personnel to some risk of exposure to possible infectious fluids and may create some problems of maintaining sterility. Their have been instances where the removal problem for a reusable cardiovascular drape has been such that the surgeon has elected to cut the drape, much as would be done with a disposable drape. This, of course, effectively precludes reuse of the drape.
In some surgical procedures such as a by-pass procedure, veins are removed from at least one of the patient's legs to provide the by-pass material. When a disposable drape is used, it is common procedure for the surgeon to cut a fenestration in the disposable drape along the patient's leg involved. If both legs are involved, the surgeon will cut two fenestrations. Once the surgical procedure with respect to one or both legs is completed, the surgeon-made fenestration or fenestrations are closed through the use of an auxiliary drape device.
When a reusable surgical drape is employed, such a drape will normally be provided with an elongated, rectilinear fenestration for each leg. When one or both of these elongated rectilinear fenestrations are not being used, sterility is maintained by covering them with an auxiliary drape member.
The present invention is based upon the discovery that the above-noted problems, encountered with prior art cardiovascular surgical drapes, can be overcome through the provision of appropriately located slits formed in the drape and having overlapping material edges. The overlapping edges are provided with means to releasably join them together. One such slit extends from the chest fenestration to an edge of the surgical drape. This strip being openable to release the drape from the patient around any chest tubes or the like without disconnection thereof. The drape is additionally provided with a similar pair of slits at the location of each of the patient's legs, each of these slits being so shaped that, when opened, it will form an appropriate fenestration along its respective patient leg. Means are provided between the overlapping edges of each of these leg slits to maintain the leg slits closed when not being used, and therefore, making unnecessary the use of additional drape devices to maintain sterility.